Winter Olympics 2026 Day 4 recap: USA hockey rolls past Canada, Ilia Malinin shines, Mikaela Shiffrin disappoints

· Yahoo Sports

Day 4 of the 2026 Winter Olympics on Tuesday brought more hardware for Team USA, but no gold. A pair of U.S. contenders, however, looked very much like gold medal favorites in preliminary action.

Meanwhile, there was more Olympic struggle for U.S. alpine great Mikaela Shiffrin, who blew an opportunity to secure her first Olympic medal since 2018 in PyeongChang. 

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And a Norwegian biathlete may have given the most bizarre post-competition interview in Olympics history.

Here are five of the top stories from Day 4 of the Milan Cortina Olympics.

If this was a preview of the gold medal game, Team USA is a strong bet to take home the top prize.

On the heels of a 3-0 start in group play with a combined scored of 15-1, the U.S. women's hockey team was expected to face its first and stiffest test of the Milan Cortina Games on Tuesday against fellow gold medal contender Canada. Instead, it was another USA blowout. 

USA opened up a 2-0 first-period lead en route to a 5-0 blowout of Canada to improve to 4-0 at the Olympics. Abbey Murphy set the tone for the win with a sensational no-look backward pass that set up Hannah Bilka for a one-timer and a 2-0 USA lead.  

From there, it was a Team USA romp. 

The loss was Canada's first of the Games, and it's still expected to advance to a gold medal matchup against the U.S. But if the two teams meet again in the final game of the Olympics, there's little from Tuesday's game to suggest that Canada will mount a challenge. 

Mikaela Shiffrin is widely considered the greatest female alpine skier of all-time. But her struggles in Beijing were one of the biggest stories of the 2022 Olympics as she failed to medal in any of the six events she competed in and failed to finish in three of those races.

Her 2026 Games are off to a rocky start. Shiffrin made her Milan Cortina debut on Tuesday in the team combined event with teammate Breezy Johnson. 

Johnson followed up her individual gold medal in the downhill event with the fastest time in the downhill portion of Tuesday's competition, setting Shiffrin up in position to secure gold in the slalom portion with a strong run. Johnson and Shiffrin didn't finish on the podium.

The most decorated female slalom skier of all-time, Shiffrin finished in 15th place out of 18 slalom skiers. The cushion Johnson provided in winning the downhill was erased, and Johnson and Shiffrin finished in fourth place. 

Mikaela Shiffrin, left, gets a hug from teammate Breezy Johnson after her 15th-place finish in the slalom kept them off the podium in the women's team combined event.REUTERS / Reuters

Shiffrin, who has three Olympic medals including two golds from prior Games, told Olympics.com before these Games that she wants to "make peace" with the Olympics at Milan Cortina. She defined that peace as being able to "openly accept anything that happens." And she acknowledged that she had been "a little bit" scared of the Olympics following her Beijing experience.

Shiffrin will have fewer opportunities to medal in Milan Cortina than she did in Beijing. She's cut her competition schedule in half and is focusing on the slalom races that are her strength. With one race down, she'll have two more opportunities to medal in the giant slalom (Feb. 15) and slalom (Feb. 18)

Ilia Malinin's win in the free skate Sunday ensured a gold medal for Team USA in a tight team figure skating competition. Malinin is now in position for his second gold medal of the Milan Cortina Games.

Malinin followed up Sunday's medal-clinching effort with a nearly flawless short program Tuesday to take control of the men's individual competition.

The "Quad God" completed two quad jumps and his signature back flip without notable error while executing a program with the highest technical difficulty in Tuesday's competition.

He performed with joy and exuberance and no signs of nerves at his first Olympic Games.

The effort secured a score of 108.16, more than five points ahead of Tuesday's second-place finisher and his top rival, Japan's Yuma Kagiyama (103.07). Thanks in part to that cushion, Malinin will enter Friday's free skate as the favorite to take home the gold medal. 

But he'll have to maintain his level of excellence to fend off Kagiyama, who was outstanding in the team competition and won the silver medal in this event in Beijing.

U.S. curlers Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse already secured their Olympic dreams just by making it to Tuesday's mixed doubles curling final, which ensured their place on the podium. 

But gold would have been sweet. Ultimately, Dropkin and Thiesse fell painfully short in a dramatic gold-medal match that Sweden's brother-sister tandem of Rasmus and Isabella Wranå won 6-5 in a match that wasn't decided until the final throw.

Dropkin and Thiesse made early mistakes that allowed Sweden to take a 4-3 advantage through six ends. USA rallied for a 2-point seventh to take a 5-4 advantage into the decisive eighth end.

But there, Wranå had a chance to close out a win for Sweden with the final throw of that match. Wranå, who was nearly flawless in Tuesday's final, delivered to secure two points and a 6-5 win for the gold medal.

While surely disappointing in the moment, there's no reason for Dropkin and Thiesse to hang their heads. Their run to the gold medal match was an upset, and their hardware represents USA's second ever Olympic medal in curling following John Shuster's team that secured gold in the men's competition in 2018.

Ashley Farquharson made U.S. Olympic history on Tuesday with a bronze-medal run to secure the nation's second medal in women's luge.

She needed a dramatic comeback to make it happen.

Germany's Julia Taubitz and Merle Malou Fräbel were in control in first and second place as the country sought its eighth straight gold medal and fourth consecutive gold-silver finish in the event. But Fräbel had a rocky third run and dropped into eighth place, opening the door for other competitors to move onto the podium.

Farquharson took advantage, jumping from fifth to third place with her third run. She entered her fourth and final run knowing she was in control of her place on the podium. When she crossed the finish line with a clean run and a time of 52.909, she knew that she'd secured at least a bronze medal.

 Taubitz earned Germany's eighth straight gold medal in the event while Latvia's Elina Bota secured silver.

Farquharson joins Erin Hamlin (bronze, Sochi 2014) as the only U.S. women to medal in the history of the event.

All three U.S. skaters at Tuesday's men's short program qualified for Friday's free skate including Maxim Naumov, who's competing under tragic circumstances. 

Both of Naumov's parents died in the Washington D.C. plane crash in 2025 that claimed 67 lives when an American Airlines flight collided with a military helicopter mid-air. His parents, Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, were world champion skaters for Russia who competed in the 1994 Olympics. 

Naumov held up a picture of his parents as he awaited his score on Tuesday following his short program.

Naumov is in 14th place after Tuesday's short program and will advance alongside his U.S. teammates Malinin and Andrew Torgashev (8th place) to compete in Friday's free skate.

Norway's Sturla Holm Lægreid secured bronze in the 20km biathlon on Tuesday. He immediately celebrated by admitting on live TV that he cheated on his girlfriend. 

Wait, what?!

Here's Lægreid's post-race interview with Norway's NRK:

And here's what he said, via BBC translation:

"There's someone I wanted to share it with who might not be watching," he said, fighting back tears. "Six months ago I met the love of my life — the most beautiful and kindest person in the world. Three months ago I made my biggest mistake and cheated on her.

"I had the gold medal in life, and I am sure there are many people who will see things differently, but I only have eyes for her."

That's one way to come clean.

Lægreid also said that he already told his girlfriend the bad news last week. At least he didn't break it to her on live TV?

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